The oldest neighborhoods flood, not the poorest
We scored 116 metro Detroit communities and about 1,100 neighborhoods on basement-flood risk using public housing and flood data. Here is what the numbers show.
Why age, not income, predicts the risk
Sump pumps, exterior weeping tile, and backwater valves only became standard in homes built after the 1960s. Older homes rely on original clay drain tiles that crack and clog over decades. Layer on the heavy clay soil that blankets southeast Michigan, which holds water against foundations instead of letting it drain, and the aging combined sewers common in the inner ring, and the pattern is clear: the communities at the top of the list average 81% of homes built before 1960, while the lowest-risk communities average just 7%.
That is why some of the metro's most established, highest-value communities, the Grosse Pointes, Pleasant Ridge, Huntington Woods, Berkley, sit near the top. The June 2021 storms made the cost visible: tens of thousands of basements underwater in a single weekend and a federal disaster declaration for Wayne County. Many of these same high scorers also still run combined sewers, one pipe for sewage and stormwater, and we have documented which communities verifiably do, county by county.
The 12 highest-risk communities
Highest risk: the full top 15
| # | Community | BRI | Pre-1960 | Median value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pleasant Ridge | 100 | 92% | $448,700 |
| 2 | Grosse Pointe Park | 96 | 87% | $473,100 |
| 3 | Hamtramck | 96 | 86% | $131,000 |
| 4 | Grosse Pointe | 94 | 83% | $436,800 |
| 5 | Detroit | 93 | 78% | $83,900 |
| 6 | Grosse Pointe Farms | 91 | 86% | $442,000 |
| 7 | Huntington Woods | 88 | 88% | $473,900 |
| 8 | River Rouge | 86 | 73% | $65,100 |
| 9 | Ferndale | 85 | 76% | $247,700 |
| 10 | Berkley | 83 | 78% | $316,700 |
| 11 | Wyandotte | 82 | 78% | $166,900 |
| 12 | Eastpointe | 81 | 78% | $142,200 |
| 13 | Redford Township | 80 | 79% | $155,600 |
| 14 | Allen Park | 79 | 77% | $183,700 |
| 15 | Grosse Pointe Woods | 78 | 74% | $342,100 |
Lowest risk
The lowest-scoring communities are newer, outer suburbs, built mostly after modern basement drainage became standard. Low is not zero on clay soil, but the structural exposure is far smaller.
| # | Community | BRI | Pre-1960 | Median value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 116 | Macomb Township | 1 | 4% | $387,000 |
| 115 | Lyon Township | 1 | 7% | $473,300 |
| 114 | Novi | 5 | 5% | $421,900 |
| 113 | Northville Township | 6 | 5% | $551,800 |
| 112 | Chesterfield Township | 6 | 7% | $295,700 |
| 111 | Canton Township | 6 | 4% | $372,400 |
| 110 | Oakland Township | 7 | 10% | $588,900 |
| 109 | Washington Township | 7 | 10% | $408,400 |
| 108 | Brownstown Township | 8 | 10% | $272,700 |
| 107 | Oxford Township | 9 | 12% | $369,700 |
How risk is measured
The Basement Risk Index is a 0–100 score. The two largest inputs are U.S. Census measures of housing age, the share of homes built before 1960 and the median year built. The City of Detroit's score also incorporates more than 13,400 documented Improve Detroit / 311 water-in-basement reports; suburban scores are modeled from housing data and labeled as such. Scores are rescaled across all 116 communities; the metro median is 37. Full detail is on our methodology page.
Planning a repair? See how to vet a waterproofing contractor and browse our directory of verified local contractors, each record showing the basement risk of the communities it serves. The newest records in verification: Basement Waterproofing of Michigan (Troy) and Swift Dry (Farmington Hills).
See your own community
Look up your neighborhood on the interactive Basement Risk Index map.
Open the map →If you're fixing this
We keep public-record profiles of metro Detroit basement waterproofing contractors, plus city hubs for the highest-risk communities with verified coverage.
No contractor pays for placement or ranking here. How we verify.
For journalists and local sites
This data is free to use and cite. We are happy to provide the full ranking, the methodology, or a neighborhood-level breakdown for any community you cover: [email protected]. See also our analysis of who bears Detroit's basement-flood burden.